Level 2 Detail of experimental conditions (what might be found in a journal paper or project brief in Hydstra)

Description of study

What?

A crop production experiment identified the effect of intensive and traditional crop rotations on soil properties and crop production.

When and Where?

The study was established in 1978 on a hard-setting red-brown earth soil with a sandy loam texture at Tarlee, 80 km north of Adelaide, South Australia. The long term mean annual rainfall in the growing season is 355 mm (April – October). Soil characteristics for the site are detailed in Table 1.

How?

The experiment comprised of eight two-year rotations in factorial combination with three stubble + tillage treatments. The plots (6 by 40 m) were split into three application rates of N fertiliser. There were two phases to ensure that each crop was grown each year with two replicates.

The eight crop rotations were continuous wheat (Triticum aestivum); wheat-barley (Hordeum vulgare); wheat-field peas (Pisum sativum); wheat-lupins (Lupinus angustifolius); wheat-field beans (Vicia faba); wheat-volunteer annual pasture (grasses and broadleaf weeds plus medics, Medicago sp.); wheat-sown legume pasture (medics and subterranean clover, Trifolium sp.); and wheat-fallow.

The three stubble + tillage treatments over 1978-87 were stubble burned; stubble incorporated into the soil; and stubble chopped and retained as a surface mulch. All of which were cultivated for weed control and seed-bed preparation. In 1988, treatment management was modified to eliminate burning and to include no tillage. The treatments became stubble removed + cultivation; stubble retained + cultivation; and stubble retained + no tillage.

Measurements were made annually on wheat plots from 1978 – 1987 and included; crop establishment, root diseases, dry matter at flowering, dry matter at maturity, harvest index, tiller density, grain yield, thousand-grain weight, grains per ear and crop residue.

Project administration

Site identifier code:  NA

Principal investigator: Schultz JE

Principal data manager: NA

Principal organizations: South Australian Research and Development Institute

Data custodian: South Australian Research and Development Institute

Key co-operators: South Australian Research and Development Institute

Data access policy: Research has been published but base data is not archived

Planned pathway for data: completed study, no evidence of formal database records.

Data warehousing: for ongoing studies NA

Planned data upload frequency: for ongoing studies NA

Key references and sources of this data synthesis

These data summaries have been extracted from:

      i.        Schultz JE. 1995. Crop production in a rotation trial at Tarlee, South Australia. Australian Journal of Experimental Agriculture 35: 865 – 76.

Keywords:

Wheat, legume, crop production, nitrogen, pasture, barley

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